Most of my photography wildlife trips take me to the Glen River Park. It’s quite near my house, so I don’t even have to bike over there, just a short walk. It’s a wonderful, though neglected place. Neglected because there is constantly kids setting fire to the gorse, and the fire brigade has to be called, countless plants, and sadly yes, even a few animals die because some kids were bored, and no steps are taken to make sure it doesn’t happen again. It always raises my spirits a bit to see the gorse growing back once more after the latest arson attack, and within a few weeks, it would be so overgrown with gorse that all evidence that there was ever a fire there would be gone. But also it’s crushing to see that it’s just an accepted reality, fires in the Glen Park “just happen” no need to do anything to stop it.
But I’m not here to talk about the lack of care for and appreciation for this amazing area for wildlife on the North Side of Cork, though I could write several essays on that. No, I’m here to talk about a wonderful bee!
It’s not my first encounter with an orange legged furrow bee, so why was this encounter so much fun?
Firstly because I got the best photographs of one, in the photo at the top you can really see the bee’s eyes. I always like to capture a creature’s eyes, because, and, there’s quite a few debatables in this, but it always feels as though if you get a photograph of the eyes, you are showing that it’s a thinking, feeling creature.
And as I said, there’s debatables there. To what extent do insects think and feel? I would be quite surprised if bees don’t, but I can’t say I know for sure. Also, am I in danger of anthropomorphizing insects by talking about their eyes as though it’s the window into their soul? While I like to get pictures of a spider’s eyes, depending on species, sight isn’t necessarily as important to them as sense of touch. Spiders, with some exceptions such as the jumping spider, do not have great eye sight. So for a spider, the window into their soul would be, I don’t know, their skin?
So it gets complicated. Part of what gets me excited about nature photography is showing that these creatures are fellow citizens of planet Earth that deserve our consideration. Maybe seeing the eyes of the creature gets people to feel that way. Maybe it just causes them to see the insect as more similar to us humans than they really are. But if people are under a false impression that insects are like humans, maybe they’ll show them more care and consideration! But they’ll do this because they wrongly see a reflection of themselves in the animals, so is that bad?
Enough of this convoluted philosophizing and get to the damn bee!!!
Yeah, that’s the orange legged furrow bee, standing right outside her house! And then she went inside, and I could see her in there. So why was this experience important to me?
Too often, when I’m doing my wildlife photography, I get very focused on getting the detail on the insect, spider or bird. The eyes! The mouth! Wow, you can count every hair on that insect, that’s fricken amazing! And don’t get me wrong, I love that aspect of it too. One of my proudest moments with the camera was getting a really good closeup of a damselfly’s eye, so you could see just how alien these creatures look.
But getting super detail isn’t the bee all and end all I PROMISE NOT TO DO THAT AGAIN! No, another important aspect is seeing a day in the life of an animal. What they eat. Who they eat. Conflicts with other animals, or conflicts with animals of the same species. Raising their young. And that NSFW stuff that dock bugs keep doing on leaves, for God’s sake do you guys not have a private space where you can do that!
So in seeing the orange legged furrow bee going into her house, I feel I saw a part of her day. Why did she go in at that exact time? I don’t know, but I saw where she lives, and for me that was an absolutely spectacular experience.
Orange legged furrow bees can be social or solitary based on climate, a shorter warm season usually means they prefer to be solitary. This was one was solitary. So even the bees agree that the Irish Summer is too short!
And the entrance of the nest was facing South, and on a slope. This is to insure that the nest gets the maximum amount of warmth throughout the day.
https://www.inaturalist.org/guide_taxa/369950
And then I got to see this bee do a bit of digging!
Digging!
So I was very happy that I got close ups of this bee. The eyes! The window into their soul! We’ll just say it is, okay?! But what made me just as happy was getting to see a fraction of a day of a bee’s life. Makes me wonder about what I missed. What was her past like, and what will happen to her in the future? It makes me reflect on the fact that, near where we live, sometimes in our own houses, non human minds are experiencing a life that we will never fully understand. And now I hope you spend the rest of the day philosophizing on what is is like to be a bee!
Ponderings Of An Autist 